I was watching the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and not enjoying it very much when the power went off in our flat. This had happened last week as well and I was not that worried about it as we got it back pretty quickly that time. So i went to bed and fell asleep a bit only to be woken up about an hour later by a friend who had recently arrived to melbourne and wanted to meet up with. The power was still out.
A quick shower and I was on the bus. Only then did I realise that the blackout had affecte not only us but the whole of the suburb. The traffic lights were not working and there were cops directing traffic. I managed to catch up with my friend and went into the city where they had power and we sat in an air conditioned food caught and had some cold drinks. Around 7:30 I left my friend and decide to busy some subway for dinner considering there was no way we can cook any food without power.
When I got to my flat I found that the power had come back on and we were overjoyed and sat down to dinner while watching the Golden Globes on TV. We had finished dinner and were getting into the show when the real excitement of the day started to happend.
I heard this screeching noise and muted the TV to figure out what it was and couldnt but I coudl hear people moving outside so I opened the door and looked out. There were emergency lights in the front of our apartment block! When I went outside I saw the big fire engines parked on our doorstep and the firemen near our switchboard. Most of our neighbours were out there as well.
What had happened was that our main switchboard was very old. And when we got the power back after the main power outage, it had somehow caused and electrical short and had melted out the wiring and the switchboard had caught fire. The nuber 6 flat had lost power first and he came out and saw the flames and roused number 2 who had thrown water over the flames and then they called the fire department. All this was going on, me and my wife we still had power but then the firement had pulled out the main electric cable and all 10 units were left without power.
This being Australia and Melbourne city, you would think that this problem would be solved quickly but no, it took us four days to get the power back. Four days with cold showers, no hot food, no tea or coffee, no washing clothes, no TV and no internet. The electricity people came on Wednesday and started to work on fixing it... What they actually did was stripped off the old, charred switchboard and left. The reason for that was that they could not get the supplies they needed to fix it.
So wednesday passed and we were told that we could expect power by Sunday... Thursday cam some good news. They had got the supplies and they were putting meters up as well as a new swtchboard. We were told we culd get power tha next day. But it was not to be... The body corporate guy told us that we needed to be home so that the electrician would have easy access to our flats so they could test the power. I was working on friday, so was my wife so we gave him a key so that he could let the guys in.
Friday when I came back from work, there was still no power and the guys came into my flat to do their tests and said that everythign was working fine now. All that was left to be done was for the Electricity suppliers to come by and connect our power. So we waited and waited. And then we learnt that the guys who were supposed to come to our apartment block had been called off for some emergency work at a hospital...
We were told that they might veen ome by later that night but that they didnt need to get into our house. so we went to sleep. Around 1 0;clock I heard this loud banging on my door and woke up slowly. It stopped and it took me a while to realise that it could be the electricity suppliers. So i went to my study where our switches are and turned it on. No power... I got dressed and went out. Our neighbours had power!! I quickly ran downstairs only to find that those people had left already adn we spent that night without power as well.
At 4 am we decided to call Citipower and after five minutes of holding and waiting was passed to an operator who ahd no idea what I was talkign about. It seemed that they did not do what I had just seen them do. It was not them. And then she put me on hold. I was still on hold when the credit on the phone ran out. It was a prepaid so...
ANyways I went to work and left the job to my wife who tried valiently to get through again but with no luck. So she went and found the body corporate guy who was very helpful in calling them up and talking to them, quietly insisting that they infact had come last night while the operater vehemently denied having done so... It took most of the morning but when I got home around 12 we had power back on!
Four days living on takeaway has definitely made us decide not to have takeaway for a long time. We also had a mountian of dirty dishes and dirty clothes that needed to be washed and our flat reeked as we could not clean it. No TV and no Internet was probably a good thign even though we were bored out of our minds. I managed to read one of the books I had been meaning to read for quite sometime. It is really scary to see how dependent we are on electricity. I only hope that nothign like this will happen ever again.
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